Senior Planner

Phoenix Group ,
Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh
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Job Description

Job Family - IT & Change, Band B / 2B (Intermediate post UPP) Duration - Permanent Closing Date - 12 June 2020 Contact - Karen Postoyalko INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND The Phoenix Group (Acquisition and Integration Portfolio) is looking for skilful and creative people to join our fast-paced organisation and help us reach our ultimate target - to be unrivalled leaders in the next generation of financial services. As a Senior Planner for the Acquisition & Integration Portfolio, you will support the Head of Transition Management Office(TMO), in ensuring the successful delivery of the Phoenix Transition Portfolio of programmes and projects. This involves owning and developing the planning standards and templates, developing plans for complex programmes in conjunction with the programme/project managers; facilitating planning workshops, and engendering a culture of continuous improvement across the Portfolio for all matters relating to planning and plan management. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES Working directly in support of the Head of TMO, Acquisition & Integration Portfolio you will: Develop and maintain the planning standards and disciplines required to operate a robust, yet cost effective governance and control framework across the Phoenix transition programme (c. 50m - 500m budget). Take a lead role in working with the programme managers to develop implementation plans for programmes and projects within the portfolio. Provide oversight, guidance and support to project and programme managers on plan plan management. Facilitate planning workshops as appropriate to drive identification of WBS, key milestones, the critical path, dependencies, and planning risks and assumptions. Undertake quality assurance on the health of project plans, ensuring that planning standards are observed and that plans are developed using Phoenix planning templates, in line with the Projects@Phoenix methodology. Support the Head of TMO with the mobilisation of new integration programmes, working with the programme lead(s) to identify and plan all activities required through to deal completion and subsequent separation and integration, as appropriate. Create, maintain and present executive-level MI for senior internal and external stakeholders, including, but not limited to, separation plans, programme roadmap, Life Management Board milestone tracker, steering group and board reporting Create and maintain the Transition Programme critical path and other plan MI to inform and advise programme governance forums as appropriate. Create and manage the Transition programme dependency register, ensuring project and external dependencies are identified by project managers, and agreed and tracked through to completion with the dependent party. Provide oversight - challenge and validity of dependencies Creation and oversight of change control across the Transition Programme , ensuring an appropriate process is in place to review, analyse and impact assess all change ahead of decision making by the appropriate forum. Develop the planning competencies of the project managers within the A & I Portfolio Capture planning lessons learned, ensuring these are incorporated into planning standards and templates, where appropriate. Provide guidance and oversight for the identification and tracking of milestones and planning assumptions in SmartCore. WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR Essential Skills Excellent understanding of project management disciplines Knowledge of governance, controls and reporting mechanisms to an auditable standard Experienced programme level planner - (including experience in developing plans for complex programme from initiation to baselining the plans) Solid project planning and organising skills with the ability to facilitate planning workshops. Demonstrated ability to successfully support large programmes of significant complexity. Excellent written, oral, presentation and facilitation skills and proven ability to provide high quality management information. Experience of developing, implementing and enforcing planning standards and processes. Creation of comprehensive high, medium and detailed level plans, reflecting key dependencies, risks, issues and assumptions. Critical path analysis. Dependency Management across a complex programme. Excellent PC literacy, particularly Project, Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Experience of project / programme support in the Life Assurance industry advantageous. Ability to work under pressure and to be flexible in working practices to align appropriately to the requirements of a specific programme. Excellent communication skills and ability to interact and persuade / influence at Senior level Good approach/understanding to the delivery and tracking of project benefits. In depth understanding and application of financial management of project costs including tracking and reporting. Demonstrated ability to successfully mobilise and run project/programme offices on large projects/programmes. Readily champi

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